This invention relates to load hauling vehicles such as trucks or towable trailers which may be towed by towing vehicles and in particular to vehicles having beds which can be loaded or unloaded either from the side or the rear of the bed.
The trailer shown as an example herein in addition to a tail gate which can be opened, also has one or both side walls which are hinged at the bottom edge to an adjacent edge of the bottom of the trailer so that the sidewalls can be swung from an upwardly extending closed position to a downwardly extending open position. The trailer bed can also be tilted upwardly and rearwardly in the manner of a typical dump truck to empty a load out the back end of the trailer bed when the tail gate is released to open. The trailer bed can be raised to a dump position by a typical hydraulic actuator.
In the past is has been known to have truck beds or trailer beds which may be tilted in alternate directions to dump a load from either the rear or from one more of the sides. Typical examples of such dump trucks are show by U.S. Pat. No. 1,812,915 (Wright); U.S. Pat. No. 1,965,476 (Smith); and U.S. Pat. No. 2,953,408 (Koenig). These are but a few of the many dump trucks which have various detailed mechanisms for raising the truck beds to one or more different dump positions to dump from either the rear or from the sides.
The present invention is not however intended to dump loads from the side of the bed by tilting the bed but instead swings open the sidewall to permit side loading and unloading by fork lifts of other material handling equipment. The trailer of this invention is particularly useful in hauling different types of cargo. The present trailer has a long bed which is especially useful in hauling elongated objects such as long bar stock or pipes which may extend the full length of the bed. Such objects are loaded and unloaded by swinging down the sidewall to provide access to the load by material handling equipment.
When, on the other hand, aggregate material such as sand, gravel or other loose material is hauled it the bed in may be more suitable to raise the front end of the bed to dump the load from the rear end of the bed as would be done in a conventional dump truck.
Thus it may be seen that a trailer of this type can carry a load of elongated items in one direction and on the return trip can carry a load of loose aggregate material. It can also be seen that prior art dump truck which dump both to the side and to the rear are not suited to hauling elongated items but more suited to hauling only aggregate material.
It is an object of this invention to provide a vehicle which is designed to carry multiple types of cargo which may be either elongated items or loose aggregate materials.
Another object of this invention is to provide a vehicle which can be loaded and unloaded by either the side or from the rear of the trailer bed.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a vehicle in which long sidewalls can be swung upwardly and downwardly by a power actuator.
An even further of the invention is provide a vehicle having a power operated latch on the end of the sidewall to secure the side wall in a closed position when a load is to be hauled.
These and other objects of the invention will become more fully apparent as the description proceeds in the following specification and the attached drawings.
This invention is a load carrying vehicle such as a truck or trailer which has a chassis; a bed mounted on top of the chassis; the bed having a bed bottom, a front end having a front end wall, a pair of opposed sidewalls, and a rear end having a rear door hingedly attached to the bed to permit it to be opened; at least one of the sidewalls having a lower edge hingedly connected by a hinge means to an adjacent edge of the bed bottom to permit the sidewall to be opened downwardly to provide side access to the bed for side loading and unloading; a sidewall actuator means mounted adjacent to the hinge means: and a linkage means pivotally connecting the sidewall actuator means and at least one sidewall to cause the sidewall to move back and forth between an upwardly extending closed position and a downwardly extending open position. The vehicle may also include a rearwarwdly tiltable bed for dumping a load out the rear end of bed.